Spore: Galactic Adventures Preview

Share.

Maxis present LittleBigUniverse.

By Martin Robinson

Certain quarters would have you believe that Spore was one of 2008's biggest disappointments - but having shifted three million units of a game that's birthed some 64 million creations to date, EA certainly doesn't view Will Wright's opus as a failure, claiming that it's been the most successful introduction of new IP in the company's history. An audacious claim for sure, but the appetite for Spore's brave mix of genres has set it on course to eclipse The Sims as one of EA's biggest cash cows and the milking has just begun with the unveiling of Galactic Adventures, the first of many updates for the game.

Unlike some of the more spurious expansions that blighted both The Sims and its sequel, Galactic Adventures could well be a game-changing addition to Spore's universe. Placed in the space exploration element of Spore's overarching campaign, there's one simple way to describe Galactic Adventures; this is LittleBigUniverse.

A little reductive perhaps, but the similarities between the expansion and Media Molecule's PS3 title are too numerous to ignore. Galactic Adventures is a fully-featured level editor that enables players to craft their own quests, which in turn can be published and pollinated across other player's Spore universes. It's a direct answer to critics who bemoaned the lack of things to do when exploring the galaxy, and a fairly convincing one at that.

Kicking in at Master Badge 2, an Adventure Outfitter allows players to create their own planets with which to host their quests. The terraforming itself is as detailed as anyone could possibly hope for – Maxis' Morgan Roarty, on hand to show off the pack, says for Galactic Adventures it simply exposed the developer's tools. Having created the theatre in which the quest will take place, it's then a case of putting the virtual pieces in place.

With the aforementioned 64 million creations there's no shortage of choices, and again it's a detailed tool. Characters can be pulled in from the Sporepedia, their size changed, chatter attached, awareness radiuses altered and switched between friend, foe or neutral – so you can turn that penis monster you're so proud of into a huge marauding beast that pursues players around your globe, in the process making your own little Freudian nightmare of a level. It's not just creatures that can be placed, as both buildings and vehicles can also be utilised. Populating the world finally creates a use for the wealth of user-generated content that's in existence, lending some of the more lovingly created buildings or vehicles a purpose.

There's obviously more depth to the creator than this, enabled by the ability to attach goals to the virtual actors, be that defending, killing or collecting them. For now this looks like fetch quests will a predominant form when Galactic Adventures launches, with the one Maxis-created level we saw involving the retrieval of characters. There are more levels created by the developers that will come bundled with the pack, acting as a tutorial of sorts as they outline just some of the possibilities of the editor – but having seen how the boundaries of LittleBigPlanet have constantly been stretched by its burgeoning community, expect the unexpected.

One of Galactic Adventure's key introductions likely to facilitate some more outlandish designs is the new jetpack, which enables players to bound across levels with ease. Currently the implementation is a little glitchy with the player more likely to fall through an object than find a steady footing. Seeing as so much of LittleBigPlanet's joy comes from the reliable physics that powers the platforming, it appears there's still a fair amount of work to prevent Spore's user-created levels becoming frustrating chores.

But there's still time to add the final polish to Galactic Adventures, as the build we were presented with is only in early alpha phase. Overall it's hard not to be impressed by Spore's first substantial update – if the inevitable flurry of expansions for Spore that are set to follow display even a modicum of the imagination that's on show here, the future for Maxis' game is very promising indeed.